Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam A pond dedicated to Redear Sunfish

It is a watershed pond Brian. It should stay full as well as any of my other ponds.

I actually built two terraces to direct water into the pond, but it was not really needed. It would have filled adequately without them, but it does provide some additional watershed as well as protect that corner of the field that I was having some minor issues with erosion anyway. So a win win. Probably about 12-15 acre watershed that will run into it.

I think it will be about an acre and a quarter. Maybe an acre and a half at most. 9 ft. max depth but lots of underwater humps but little additional shallow water. I would guess average depth of 5' with all the humps taken out. Probably six had I not put the humps in.

Not enough capacity to do much as far as irrigation. For irrigation the ponds are made very deep and shaped like a bath tub. No intentions other than enjoying it.

Thanks.

View of one of the two terraces leading into the pond.

Thoughts on adding crawfish, grass shrimp and scuds to widen your food base for your RES.

Good ideas.

But no, I had not thought that far ahead yet.

It is late enough this year and looks like colder temperatures will finally be arriving so I figured it would be next spring before I introduced anything. Just some puddles in the bottom so far from an earlier rain.

You could stock a few snails in the puddle now.

I think in Snrub's location, near a natural stream watershed, that crawfish, snails, etc, will stock themselves over time.

Shorty I seriously considered getting a strand of water primrose out of my sediment pond and put it in. It would likely have snails or eggs on it.

Since I had the fish kill in it from the chicken litter runoff, the primrose has turned a dark green/reddish healthy look to it like I have never seen it in other ponds. It really likes those nutrients. And snails galore. The RES I restocked should be well fed for a while. I think if I took some primrose from this pond and put it in the new one, the biological process would definitely start.

I actually did put snails and algae from my main pond into my forage pond which has RES only when it was new.

A person has to be a die hard RES fan to stock snails.

Some pictures of the pond as it is filling. Figured it would be full by now, but we have had a very dry winter. That is not all bad. I may have time to get a fish structure or two built and installed before it fills completely.

This level of fill really shows how I put a LOT of earthen structure features in the pond. Also shows some of the rock/gravel beds I added around the edge.

As soon as it warms after this cold spell and I get an algae bloom going, will trap some FHM out of my sediment pond and add to this pond to get the food chain going.

The guys got it limed while I was gone. Will try to get some temporary cover started on the ground as soon as possible. Then probably try to plant permanent grass this fall.

Guessing it has about 4' more to go to full pool. You can see the overflow pipe in some of the pictures.

With these pictures pond is about 18" below full pool.

Caught 5 RES 3" to 6" size out of my forage pond and put them in this pond. Then trapped 5 more 2-3" and also added them. The pond does not have much of an algae bloom yet so hope the fish do not starve. My intention is to get a couple hundred RES from the fish truck along with a few pounds of FHM but it will not be around for another month. I'll put a few I catch of my own in the mean time. Hopefully get a couple different age/size classes going at once that way.

Put about 5# of 13-13-13 fertilizer to aid in getting a bloom. Last fall I had put several scoops of cow manure compost in the empty pond basin for the same purpose. Pond was previously limed.

A few update pictures with descriptions.

Edit: raining now, likely next pictures posted will be at full pool.

Pictures of pond at full pool from a couple days ago. Raining cats and dogs right now and overflow and emergency overflow flowing water. Small creek flooding so hope I do not get GSF or BG either from the creek (swimming up the overflow pipe) or adjacent old refurbished pond (by water backing up into field and fish swimming around from pond to pond).

Also added clumps of FA and water primrose that were infested with snails to get a snail population started in this pond for the RES. I put crushed limestone around the pond for spawning substrate and also as good substrate for algae and snail growth.

You gotta be a dedicated RES lover to inoculate a pond with snails......on purpose.

Yesterday was Dunn's route day and I had fish ordered for this pond. Cool drizzly day so good for the half hour ride home for the fish.

Stocked 200 2" RES and 2# of FHM Tuesday.

Also Monday I had caught 2 more larger RES from my forage pond and transferred them to this pond. That brings the number of advanced size RES to 12 in this pond.

So the pond is stocked with all all I intend for the time being. In a couple years if the RES get to numerous and chance stunting I will put either a few HSB or SMB or maybe some of both to control recruitment.

The pond is still muddy and so it does not have the algae bloom I would have liked to see. Hope there is enough food for the RES in there. I will throw out a small amount of Optimal JR and/or AM400 each day for the FHM and just in case any of the RES take to it.

I'm trying to figure out how to handle my terrace needs. When my pond was built they put in a terrace that catches about 25 acres of watershed for my 2 acre pond. The terrace is about 600 yards long and the pond filled very quickly! I cut a ditch in the terrace about 100 yards from the pond due to heavy rain events, and pond has been able to stay full with watershed reduced to about 5 acres. In my area evaporation and rainfall are about equal, but averaging a little more rain than evap. 44" evaporation to 47"rainfall.

How are you going to deal with you terrace now that it is full?

I have not done anything. I have only about 15 acres maybe (have never took the time to measure it) for 3+ acres of ponds.

I was not planning on doing anything but thinking of your situation and how to solve it, if got me to thinking of mine.

What you could do (and I could also) is put a culvert through your terrace at some strategic point (I could dump mine into another terrace that I built recently that goes south to the creek). Then in normal times just cap the culvert or have a welding shop make a metal slide valve and leave it shut. If the pond was at full pool and large rains were being predicted, a person could open the slide gate and let the water bypass the pond. If it were in an accessible location, a person could even regulate the flow during or in the middle of a rain event. Pond full, go open the gate.

Normally I want all the water I can get as I want some flow through during the spring after a dry summer or fall to get rid of some excess nutrients. But once in a while like now there has already been plenty of flow through, the ponds are full, and do not need any additional water. So the gated culvert through the terrace would divert flow.

A person could even put the culvert 6" or a foot off the bottom of the terrace so some of the water would still flow to the pond but excessively hard rains that had the terrace running fuller could bypass some of the water.

Just an idea. Doubt if I do it, but I think something like that would work for ponds with excessive watershed.

This also made me think of a neighbor farmer that has a couple fields that are parallel terraced.

Parallel terraces can be used in fields that the slope is such that the terraces "almost" run in a parallel. The advantage of farming parallel is that all farming practices can be farmed with the terraces (like contour farming) without the hassle of point rows like contour farming. By not farming across terraces they last a lot longer....... but I digress.

The reason they are important to this discussion is that rarely do parallel terraces end up draining perfectly to the end of the field. To rectify this, pipes are buried in strategic locations to carry the low point of one terrace to the next down slope terrace. These are essentially underground culverts that have risers (and trash shields similar to trash risers built for pond overflow pipes) that the water drains out of the bottom of the terrace and discharge to where ever the water is desired to go.

A person could do this with a terrace going into a pond. It might not drain all the water in a big rain event, but a riser in the bottom of a terrace that could be capped (or slide gate) then under ground drainage to take the water down hill to an exit point. You can do a search for parallel field terraces for some pictures of the risers and construction.

Update: Have been feeding a small amount of feed for the last couple months mostly for the FHM but hopefully at least a few of the RES get the idea and eat. Thousands and thousands of FHM fry from half inch long to about an inch long attack the pellets all around the shoreline. So the FHM are doing fine.

May take a very small jig and try to catch a few of the RES fingerlings that were stocked and see how big they are getting.

Glad to see you update. I'm holding off till September to fish my pond. The Catfish keep my pond stirred up so all we can see is them. They are fat and happy though. That's not to say the whole pond is muddy, just where we stand to feed.

I do know I've have Sunfish offspring cause Wife has seen small ones on occasion. My pond is dropping and by the end of August, it will be about where it was when we stocked it. That is unless we see some rain.

Just an update on my RES/SMB at the year 3 mark.... my RES have reached 1.5 lb and SMB (which haven't been in 2 yrs yet) are at 120-130 relative weight. I love it. I don't anticipate any over recruitment that I need to deal with in the coming years. Shorty has fished it, and I've sought his advice on occasion, and as far as I can tell he doesn't foresee any issues either.

That's some serious growth. Congrats

I'm a big believer in what Optimal has done for my pond. I also stocked the heck out of FHM a year before stocking RES and I still have clouds of them. Year one I stocked FHM, year two I stocked RES and year three I stocked SMB. So far I can't complain at all, but all ponds seem to do great their first 5-8 years. So we will see how long it can continue.

[quote NEDOC]Just an update on my RES/SMB at the year 3 mark.... my RES have reached 1.5 lb and SMB (which haven't been in 2 yrs yet) are at 120-130 relative weight. I love it. I don't anticipate any over recruitment that I need to deal with in the coming years. Shorty has fished it, and I've sought his advice on occasion, and as far as I can tell he doesn't foresee any issues either. [/quote]

That sounds like a great mix. When Bob Lusk was here he suggested I get some SMB and put in this RES pond. He suggested getting them ordered a year ahead as sometimes they are hard to come by.

Wow! Pound and a half RES. That is really something.

I finally got around to seeding my dam on this pond. Been kind of dragging my feet. Lazy I guess.

I've fished this pond several times with nary a bite. Nothing. I hope I have some RES in there. I have found 4 abandoned nests, so I either have some fish in there or maybe alien circles instead. The picture of the RES is from my main pond, but I would think my spring stocked fingerlings should be that size by now. Sure wish I could catch a few just to see how they are doing.

I originally was not going to put rock lining around the bank in this pond. But it was already starting to get a little bench around the water edge from wave erosion so I thought, what the heck, just as well.

should help limit turbidity and bank erosion

Descriptions on pictures.

I had seen 4 nests around the circumference of this pond, likely from the first ten adult RES I stocked this spring. The 200 small fingerlings additionally stocked likely would not have been big enough to have spawned yet and the other two adults I put in likely after spawn was over.

But till today I had no knowledge of recruitment.

I was catching 3" fingerlings out of my forage pond with a cast net to bring down to this pond for additional stocking. Caught 71 fingerlings in about ten throws of the net. The first pictures are of these RES that I put in this RES pond from my forage pond.

Then it dawned on me (I'm a little slow at times) after releasing them into the pond. If I can catch RES fingerlings in my forage pond with the cast net, maybe I can see if I can catch anything in this RES pond. So I gave it a try. Well at least one pair must have had success because out of four throws of the net in the shallow west end of the pond I got three 2" RES. I know they were not any of the ones I had just released because they were in a different part of the pond and the ones I got were smaller than any I had transferred from the forage pond.

So eureka! It was a good RES day. Not only do I have good fingerling production from my forage pond, but I also got at least some reproduction from the small number of adult RES I had put in this RES only pond. This should give me four distinct age/size classes of RES in this pond. Success.

Now I'm thinking I should get some SMB ordered for next year to put in here.

I'm Pumped!

Called Hartley's Fish Farm in Kingman, Kansas to see if they would have any SMB available next year. Thought I would inquire and see what it would take to get some next spring. It so happens they have some now and they will be having a delivery truck coming my direction after Thanksgiving.

So my RES only pond is going to become a RES/SMB pond sometime after Thanksgiving.

Exciting times.

That is awesome!! I'm looking forward to the updates!

/c